The structural components of an aircraft wing withstand a variety of forces during flight, takeoff, and landing. These structural components are also designed to meet a large number of requirements (e.g., bird strike, lightning strike, air loads, ground loads, fuel pressure, etc.), and meeting these requirements while conforming with cost and manufacturing constraints remains a complicated process.
There are a wide variety of techniques and designs for building aircraft wings. In particular, designs for wings that utilize composite parts have become popular because these designs reduce weight and increase strength. However, composite aircraft wings remain complex to model and expensive to test. To meet all the aforementioned requirements, engineers prefer to design composite parts that substantially adhere to existing designs for metallic wing parts. However, doing so does not take full advantage of the composite materials. For example, metal designs utilize a large number of fastened components. In composite designs, the components could be integrated into a single, cheaper lighter design, such as a unitized/monolithic design.